Battleship

Battleship: An Interview With The Director Of The Film, Peter Berg

Battleship is a new action/adventure directed and produced by Peter Berg. In this new film, the story starts off with Taylor Kitsch as Lt. Alex Hopper, a Naval officer assigned to the USS. Battleship is described as an epic tale of action and adventure story that happens in the skies, land and seas. A battle to survive against a superior force. Let’s take a look at how Peter Berg came up with this amazing movie: Battleship that is bound to hit theaters on May 18, 2012.

“Exclusive Interview with Peter Berg On His Movie: Battleship

You might think that director Peter Berg’s surname alone would have made him a little nervous about shooting a film at sea, particularly when history proves that movies filmed on the ocean are fraught with problems: see Waterworld, The Abyss and Titanicfor a few examples.

Nevertheless, Berg managed to make Battleship – a sprawling tentpole sci-fi epic, with aliens, massive boats, explosions and barnacles – without the nightmarish situations that plagued the films mentioned above – though Mr Berg did throw into the conversation almost casually, “We had sharks show up.”

As we found out in our lively, entertaining chat with Berg, which took place a few months ago while Battleship’s special effects were still being completed, the shoot went well, even though the potential pitfalls were ever-present.

Ahead of Battleship’s debut next week, we talked about the film’s making, valuable advice from Kevin Costner, special effects, and what he’s going to be directing next…

I’ve read that you rejected the idea ofBattleshipbeing a realistic war movie of humans against humans – of Americans versus Russians, for example. So the story wasn’t yet there when you came aboard, so to speak?

I pretty much put the story together. It was my idea to do it. I ended up with the basic idea of bringing aliens into the film, and creating this character called Hopper, and set it up with the writers – a couple of writers came in and out. But I knew that I wanted to make one of these films – I wanted to make a big, fun summer movie, first and foremost. I didn’t want to make a dark, realistic war film. I’m getting ready to go and make a dark, realistic war film, I understand what those are, but I wanted this to be much different.

I wanted to do a film that had a big global reach to it, and I felt that Americans fighting Russians – I didn’t feel it. That’s my next film. It’s Americans fighting Afghans, and it’s very violent and rough and brutal and real. I wanted to do one of those films where a 40-year old man can take his wife and three kids, and all five of them can have a great time. And just have a great experience, leaving their lives and problems – all this shit we have to deal with every day – far behind. Take off your critical hat, eat your popcorn, sit back, and have fun.

And that was my goal. That was the driving force behind the alien component of the film, and then once we decided to do aliens, we thought, how can we do it in a way that silences the critics, that satisfies, that is unique? And that became a whole different, serious conversation.”

Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.